Sometimes the course of our lives depends on what we do or don’t do in a few seconds, a heartbeat, when we either seize the opportunity, or just miss it. Miss the moment and you never get a chance again.

—Aidan Chambers in Dying to Know You

instant moment heartbeat missed opportunities

About Aidan Chambers

Portrait of Aidan Chambers

Aidan Chambers (27 December 1934 – 11 May 2025) was a British author of children's and young-adult novels. He won both the British Carnegie Medal and the American Printz Award for Postcards from No Man's Land (1999). For his "lasting contribution to children's literature" he won the biennial, international Hans...

More quotations from Aidan Chambers

All the time I think I can never love you more than I already do. And then you do something or say something, and I love you more than ever. Like just now. Like now. How is it possible? Can you love someone more and more and at the same time, all the time, love them as much as it’s possible to love someone?

—Aidan Chambers in This is All

More quotations tagged with “moment”

It is during our darkest moments that we must focus to see the light.

light moment focus

Do you ever feel like what's happening at this moment will never happen again? Like you could never repeat it, no matter how hard you tried?

—Jennifer E. Smith in Field Notes on Love

time perception effort moment

The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, nor to worry about the future, but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.

—The Teaching of Buddha

health moment live the future the past

Do not the most moving moments of our lives find us all without words?

—Marcel Marceau

Either move or be moved.

History

24 Jul 2013 Added